Google’s announced plans to delay the public release of the source code for Honeycomb, the tablet version of Android, are causing some indignation to be vented among the partisans of open source. But should it? This is a good time to reflect on what the freedoms guaranteed by the Open Source Definition actually mean and… Continue reading Don’t panic over Honeycomb’s release delay
Month: March 2011
Bookend consistency
I’ve been thinking recently about writing a shared-memory export for gpsd. The JSON-over-sockets client interface we have is very powerful and flexible, but more than is needed when network access to the server is not required. For embedded deployments, in particular – it would be useful to have a lower-overhead way of shipping results to… Continue reading Bookend consistency
Naked Women With Guns
(No, that is not the ultimate Armed & Dangerous post title. The ultimate Armed & Dangerous post title would be Naked Women With Guns Smash The State!.) A few nights ago I was on IRC with a friend I shall refer to as ‘H’ who may, if she wishes, identify herself in a comment, discussing… Continue reading Naked Women With Guns
The bug that didn’t bite in the night-time: an anti-disaster story
A very curious thing happened with GPSD this week. In fact it’s so odd I’m still having trouble believing it. In software engineering we often have trouble getting seemingly simple things to work reliably. How does one react when an incredibly complex, fragile piece of bit-twiddling code works – perfectly – after six years without… Continue reading The bug that didn’t bite in the night-time: an anti-disaster story
Politics as usual is over
A number of my regulars have asked me why I don’t blog about politics as much as I used to. Fundamentally, it’s because I think the value of political persuasion is decreasing fast. Political persuasion matters most when when policy options are relatively open and unconstrained by objective conditions that politics cannot alter. It matters… Continue reading Politics as usual is over
Religious toxicity
Earlier today I stumbled over some accusations that atheists are lining up with Islam because their actual enemy is not religion but Christianity. The actual revelation here is that the fever-swamps of the left are capable of generating unlimited amounts of nonsense and putting it on protest signs. And, that conservatives are still prone to… Continue reading Religious toxicity
Armed & Dangerous has offspring, sort of
See Unarmed but still Dangerous. Well, he says he’s unarmed but dangerous, yet I’ve seen no mention of empty-hand skills at all! (That was a joke. You can chuckle now.)
Lady Godiva (with apologies to the Beatles)
OK, to prepare for this read up on the legend of Lady Godiva, and then read the lyrics of the Beatles’ Lady Madonna. You might want to take the three minutes or so to watch it being performed. Now sing this to yourself:
Rape statistics: a case study in public flim-flam
A commenter on a recent thread claimed “the lifetime risk of rape for a woman [in the U.S.] is one in six…Almost everyone who deals with the issue considers that wildly too low to be realistic. But one in six is indisputable.” No incidence of rape above zero is acceptable to me. I teach women… Continue reading Rape statistics: a case study in public flim-flam
Facing your inner alpha
There’s been some discussion in response to my post on A natural contemplates game on the meaning of the term “alpha male” as it applies to humans. In comments, I had this to say as a definition: As I use “alpha”, it simply means someone who is equipped for leadership roles by psychology and temperament.… Continue reading Facing your inner alpha
A natural contemplates game
Slang dictionaries never fail to interest me. A few days ago I ran across one serving the PUA (pick-up artist) subculture, a network of men (and a few women) who have attempted to systematize and explain tactics for picking up women. Chasing links from it, I found a network of blogs and sites describing what… Continue reading A natural contemplates game